Daisy
by Ainokki
Summary: They had a brief contact in the hospital. But even the smallest touch can stay with you forever.


Author's note: I know it's not really really fanfiction, just wanted to share something with the world for change. I would love feedback. Aino x

Daisy

First I saw the daisy.

Then, when my eyes drifted right from the perfect flower I saw her. She looked as perfect as any popular girl would. I had met enough girls like her to know what to expect. I met Miley at the hospital. I was thirteen, she was seventeen.

"Why are you here?" She asked me the first day. We shared the room together, her bed was opposite mine. While the tables around my bed were covered with flowers, hers just had the one lonely daisy. I couldn't remember why I was there or how long I had been there. We stared at each other for a while, until I looked away, feeling uncomfortable. "Don't remember, huh?" She gave me a small sad smile.

We didn't talk a lot, me and Miley, in the beginning. I was too tired at first and then because I didn't think we had that much in common. I didn't want to talk to anyone and especially to someone whose life seemed so put together. Her hair was literally always perfect, even when she woke up. She made me feel like I wasn't good enough, not even for the hospital room. Just like I had always been, perhaps it should have felt familiar and welcoming.

Miley didn't force any conversation though, she sat there in silence and read her book. Sometimes she would walk up to the window and look down at the cars passing by. There was something inexplicable about her and how she was.

I spent most of my time watching her. Even when my mother came to see me to tell me how sorry she was. I pretended she wasn't there and just watched Miley reading her books. I put all my concentration from feeling guilty and bad about myself to study her and her habits. She didn't seem to mind.

"You're lucky, you know?" She said one afternoon after my mother left. My mom had sat there for hours just crying. "You have a family that cares, they come to see you every day." She gave me a half smile, the one she seemed to have on most of the time.

"I'm sure your family cares, too." I mumbled, pushed away my duvet and rolled myself up to sit on the bed. "Where are they anyway?" I had never asked anything about her or her family before that, but for some reason that Sunday with the sun shining through the blinds, I was ready to talk with her. It was that day of March when it gets hot. For exactly one day it gets hot and you become optimistic that it's summer, just to wake up the next morning and realize it's cold again. I think something about the sudden spring gave me more energy that day.

"They – they are on a holiday." She said. "But your family has been here every day since you came." I wanted laugh – or cry, if only she had been there before I came here and shared this room with her. If only she had seen how things were before. Instantly I found myself thinking about everything in my life that led me to that moment and I forced my concentration back to Miley.

"They just feel guilty." I thought about home and how much I didn't want to get back to my normal life. I got up and walked to the window next to her and looked at the cars passing by. "Where do you think they are all going?" I asked.

"They're all just looking for somewhere they can stay for forever." She said. "You want to go for a walk?" She asked, with an actual smile this time. Something about her smile compelled me and caught my curiosity.

"Where?" I asked, as I thought there was nowhere worthy to go.

"I want to show you something." She had this happiness to her that I couldn't refuse, so I nodded to accept her invitation. She took my hand and guided me through the room to the door. "Ready?" She asked.

I hadn't left our room since coming to the hospital, hadn't seen Miley leave either, I wasn't even completely sure we were allowed to. We walked through the long hall and passed the doors that all looked the same as ours but had a different number on them. There were people inside some of the rooms, families and friends visiting. Some of the rooms were quiet, like ours. We walked past them, in silence until we came to the stairs. It felt like we were breaking all the rules and we had to keep quiet or we would be noticed. It was the first secret I ever shared with anyone and it made it that much more special. We walked up until there were no more to climb. Once we reached the top I let go the breath I hadn't noticed I was holding.

The people on the top floor of the hospital were the ones who came there to stay. They knew they had passed the point of getting better. You would think that it would have been the saddest of all the floors, but it was the opposite. It was floor where the people had nothing left to hide. It looked exactly like the other ones, just like ours. Everything was painted white and there was a common area in the middle of two long halls of the rooms. Unlike our empty common area, this one was full of people. There were kids and adults and old people sitting in their wheelchairs. It seemed like the time had stopped here. Some of them were watching television, some of them were just talking, but what struck me the most was that they actually paid attention to each other. Not a single person was touching their phone or glancing at the clock on the wall. They laughed, told stories and the kids ran around them, playing.

"C'mon." Miley told me and signed with her hand to follow her. I didn't want to leave the sight of people spending time together and actually enjoying it. I turned to take one last glance and tiptoed after Miley who had already turned to walk down one of the halls.

"Where are we going?" I asked as I wished to go back to the people stopped in time, I wanted to go watch them more, to learn who they were.

"We're here." She smiled her sad smile and looked inside a room from the narrow window of the white door. I tiptoed again to look over her shoulder to see inside, I saw a room with just one bed and an old lady laying on it, looking outside through the window.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"She's Marjorie. She's been here the longest of all. Even the doctors that have been in the hospital for years weren't working when she first came here."

"But I thought people came here to.. you know.." I felt like I shouldn't say the word die when the people around me all had the faith in front of them.

"There are worse things in the world than death, Demi." Miley said and I felt my cheeks blushing. It was something about the way she said my name, like she had been living for decades and had wisdom in her I could never possess that made me feel embarrassed. "She's neither dead nor living. She's lost everything in her life worth fighting for. She has buried her parents and her children. Her husband died in Vietnam. She's been here since 1983, since she was 60 years old."

"What's wrong with her?" I asked, with little to no discretion. She didn't seem ill lying on her bed, just tired and sad. She had the same sadness as Miley did.

"They don't know what's wrong, she just can't be cured. C'mon, let's go in." She opened the door and walked in. I stood outside the door, unsure whether I should follow.

"Come on in Demi. Milet's told me a lot about you, I've been waiting to meet you for a long time." A weak voice from the bed called for me. I was scared, but obeyed and walked in to the room. "You're as pretty as she told me." Marjorie smiled at me and I walked next to Miley who was standing next to her bed.

"I didn't know I was being talked about." I looked up to Miley who was smiling to me.

"This is where I come when I need a break, it's so peaceful in here." I couldn't stop feeling like it was my fault she couldn't have peace in her own room. "Have you seen them today?" She turned back to Marjorie, with eagerness I hadn't seen in her before. I didn't know who she was talking about.

"No, not today Miley. I'll tell you when I do" The old lady said. She was looking outside again, it made it seem like she was somewhere else. Like her body was here but her thoughts were elsewhere. I wondered if we had tired her. I thought maybe she knew Miley's parents, although she had said they were on a holiday. I realized I had never even asked Miley why she was in the hospital. I had never asked how long she had been there for or when she would get to go home. Instead I knew she liked to wear her hair on loose curls, she liked to paint her nails navy blue and her favourite literature was about the Second World War. Nothing I knew about her seemed to matter much.

"Miley what happened to you?" I asked her.

"I'm not quite ready to talk about it either." She gave me that sad smile again and I looked at her and wondered if she had done what I had done. But Miley wasn't like that, she seemed to together and wise. Miley's hair was in perfect curls and she was always smiling, even when she was sad. I realized that while sharing the room with her I had started to respect her and her calmness, her presence made me feel like I could be the same. But why did she not want to talk about why she was at the hospital? "I was in an accident a while back," she said eventually and I felt bad for asking. "It's fine, really." She took a step closer to Marjorie now and took her hand to hers. "I'll come see you later, okay?" She smiled, gave a light kiss to the old, fragile hand and let it go. The old lady answered with a smile back and nodded, looking at her eyes, then mine and seeming to doze off again. I looked at her window quickly, trying to see what she was looking at.

I followed Miley out from the room, and waited as she closed the door behind me. "Marjorie has nothing left in this world for her to fight for, but she doesn't want to let go of it. She says this world is the most beautiful of all the worlds and while she knows there's something after, she still thinks there's more here for her to see." Miley told me while we walked the hall, back to the stairs.

I don't know if it was the sun that came out, if it was the connection I felt with Miley, the room with the stopped time or if it was Marjorie, but something about what happened that day made me want to wake up. It made me want to kiss my mother's cheek, hug my father and ran outside to play with my little brother. I felt like my whole life I had been surrounded by nothingness and now I finally touched something real. Before that day I hadn't appreciated the people around me and where my life was going. But that day the small things mattered and I felt beautiful, almost as beautiful as Miley.

As my mother packed my stuff, I changed out of the hospital clothes to my normal ones. My jeans were a loose fit after my days in the hospital. "Where did Miley go?" I asked and nodded at the empty bed at the other side of the room.

"Who?" My mother asked but didn't raise her eyes to meet mine. Who? Such a small question, yet I didn't know how to answer. I stared at the lonely daisy on the table next to Miley's bed. I know I didn't imagine her, she was real. At least real to me. Before we left the hospital I ran up the stairs to the top floor, but it was empty. Too early in the morning for visitors. I walked down to Marjorie's room to see if Miley was there, but all I saw was Marjorie, on her bed eyes closed and a machine attached to her.

"Are you lost young lady?" A nurse asked me, while I was sticking my nose against the glass window of Marjorie's room.

"No, I'm friends with Marjorie, can I go inside?" I asked and the nurse laughed.

"Friends with Marjorie? Darling, she hasn't been awake in nearly twenty years." She laughed again and put her hands on my shoulders and guided me away from the door. "Let's go find your family." She said while I took a last look at the door I had walked in and had a conversation with the woman who had slept for nearly twenty years.

I didn't know Miley when she went to school, but I could imagine how she was. I'm not sure I knew her at all, not even when I thought I knew her. Miley and I became friends in the hospital, but I learned her story years later. I found a story about a car crash in an old newspaper. A girl hit by a car on her way home, parents devastated and school friends grieving. I never saw Miley after our brief encounter at the hospital. But I never stopped thinking about her either. I don't know how long I knew her for, might have been minutes it could have been days. But I knew that I had leeched on her beauty. I had hoped that if I looked hard enough, I could become as beautiful. Every second I had spent looking at her reading her book or looking at the cars, I had been taking a part of her peace inside me. But then again, that's what guardian angels do. They leave a piece of themselves to your heart, for you to carry with you, when you cross the dangerous intersection.

12


End file.
